May I say one word about Tibesti and Borkou, and so conclude? Half a century ago, when Nachtigal, after exploring the Tibesti, came to the shores of Lake Chad, before setting out again to complete his work by the exploration of Kanem and Borkou, he learnt by letters from Tripoli the victories that his native country of Germany had won over France. And again, when he returned to Europe after four long years of absence, he found that peace had been made two years earlier, and that our provinces of Alsace and Lorraine had become part of Germany and were called the Reichsland; France, humiliated, was just finishing the payment to the conqueror of the milliards that were to hasten the liberation of her territory. By a striking example of the way in which history sometimes repeats itself, but with a difference, war was once more forced on France by Germany at a moment when French explorers had just set foot in Borkou and Tibesti in order to rectify, revise, and complete the unfinished work of the German explorer! And the joy that filled the heart of Nachtigal when he returned to Europe to find his country triumphant, and her borders widened with the spoils of war, swells in our hearts to-day! For it is Germany now that knows the humiliation of paying milliards to obtain the liberation of her own territory, while the tricolour floats over Metz and Strasburg, and watch indeed is kept, but to other music, on the Rhine! From this parallel, may I venture to conclude that in her treasure-house of colonial jewels France may well find a place for arid Borkou and the barren Tibesti. For would it not seem that they are, in some sort, talismans, and that when Gaul and German grapple on the banks of the great river that was set by nature and destiny to hold them apart, Fortune, that wayward goddess, shall give victory to whichever country has a son exiled in those mysterious regions, seeking, by rock and desert, new ways across their ancient sand? [_Translated from the French by W. G. Tweedale, M.A., Oxon._]